-=Lilith=-
Aztec mythology, echoing Sumerian themes, describes a wonderful garden guarded by a serpent. The serpents role in Eden is well known and so is the weakness of Eve, who's disobediance brought woe into the world.
Less well known is the rabbinical tradition in which Eve was created, not from Adams rib, but from the barbed tail he originally had, this converting the demonic element in Adam into female form. That the first target of misogyny was so formed would not have suprised the European witch-hunters, or those late medievil artists who portrayed the serpent in Eden with a womans face.
~Lilith Creation~
~The First Couple~
Although Eve was the author of mans downfall, she still was an improvement on Lilith, Adams first wife. A primordial loose woman, and probably a hussy too, she objected to her supine role in intercourse. "Why must I lie beneath you?" she asked Adam, and when he tried to force her she quit him and went to live by the Red Sea with more congenially lustful devils. But before she left Adam she bore Asmodeus and other demons. Some say she went on to be a queen in Zmargad and Sheba (Solomon, the wisest of men, thought the Queen of Sheba might be a night-demon because she had hairy legs). She is the same person as the Babylonian-Assyrian wind-demoness Lilitu, known to the Sumerians as Lillake, and a Sumerian text has her living in a willow tree for a while. She strangles infants and she is an old hand at the succubus game: no man who sleeps alone is ever quite safe from
her.
~Lilith leaving Adam's bed~
~Lilith at the Red Sea~
According to Isaiah (34:11-15), Lilith lives in the ruined desert of Edom. She keeps company with pelicans, hedgehogs, owls, ravens, jackals, ostriches, Kites, wilcats, hyenas, vipers and with satyrs.
-=Thumbnails of Lilith=-
Click on image to see larger version.
Lilith as the Queen of Sheba
Michelangleo's "Temptation and Fall"
"Temptation, Fall and Expulsion" Note the serpent has a womans head and torso.
"Lady Lilith" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
H.R. Giger's Lilith. From "Necronomicon 2"
